Chapter 41 Section 2

  I had said that I would never think about these things again, but the idea spread uncontrollably in my heart. I hastily hung up the phone and dialed Xiaohui's number again, still turned off. I sent a text message to the Dream Club: "Why can I see those?"

  No one replied to me, and I was filled with a sense of helplessness and fatigue all over my body. Every time I decided to ignore these messy things, something would inexplicably appear and pull me back in, rekindling my curiosity, as if someone was secretly watching me, giving me a push forward every time I was about to give up, refusing to let me stop.

  What would happen if I really went out? A thought suddenly emerged in my mind, but as soon as this thought arose, I suddenly felt a pair of eyes staring at me coldly from behind. I turned around abruptly, and there was nothing behind me, only a white wall.

  This scene is too familiar to me, I rushed out of the room, took out a large iron hammer and pliers from the storage room, and fiercely pounded them against the wall. The loud noise woke up my parents, who were frightened by my appearance. My mother cried and came to grab my hand, but I didn't have time or mood to explain anything to them. I simply said: "I'm not having a seizure, you guys go out first." Then I pushed them out of the room, ignoring their constant knocking on the door.

  I exerted myself bit by bit, and the white paint on the wall fell off, the grey cement blocks fell off, finally revealing the hidden wall body. Then I saw something inlaid in the wall, not the green bricks of the second-class room, but a small black coffin.

  The scene outside the door had already reached a boiling point. If it weren't for Father's poor health, he probably would have burst in by now. But I couldn't let them come in and see this - the two elderly people would definitely be frightened out of their wits. I shouted loudly at the door: "Dad, Mom, I'm fine! Don't worry!" Then I ignored whatever they were saying outside and struggled to pry loose the small coffin embedded in the wall with a crowbar.

  I carefully opened the small coffin, inside was a rectangular 'jade' pendant, on which was carved a peony 'flower', vivid and lifelike, bright and red as blood.

  The first time I saw the peony on the jade pendant turn red was at Erniang's place, and it just so happened that Erlang had an accident. The second time I saw the peony turn red was on the ancestral jade pendant given to me by my mother, which has now restored its original pure white color. However, the one from Erlang is still red. If the peony flower turning red means someone will die, then what does this jade pendant taken from my wall predict - who will die or who has already died?

  I sat there blankly, unable to make sense of anything. My parents slammed the door so hard it shook the sky. I walked over to the door and opened a crack, saying: "You guys go to sleep now, I'm fine."

  Mom wanted to say something else, but Dad pulled her and said: "It's okay if nothing is wrong, then you should rest early too." After closing the door, I heard Dad whispering to Mom: "Maybe this kid has been writing too much lately. I've heard many writers are like that."

  I heard the worry in Dad's subsequent sigh, perhaps he was afraid that I would choose to commit suicide like those writers. At that moment, a surge of warmth rose up in my heart. I opened the door and the two old people were still at the door. I said: "Dad, Mom, I really won't have any problems, you don't need to worry."

  My old mother turned around and patted my head, saying: "Good boy, it's okay if nothing happens. You should go to bed early." I nodded, closed the door again, how could I sleep at this time? Sitting on the edge of the bed, thinking for a moment, I squatted down and took out the fourth small black coffin from under the bed. Now I have four jade pendants, no matter who these jade pendants predict will die, at least I should be able to open this small coffin now and see what's inside. Then, I don't care about any first lady or second lady, I don't care about red dresses or red peonies. I just write my own stories, love my own woman, live my own life, and don't care about anything else.

  I carefully placed the four pieces of 'jade' pendants on the back of the fourth coffin, then pressed down with my hand and turned it lightly. With a creaking sound, the lid of the coffin slid open slightly. I held my breath, and inside was still a piece of paper. I suppressed the excitement in my heart, took out the paper, and saw a line of familiar handwriting on it, which was exactly the same as the handwriting on the paper in the first coffin that read "Xiao Hui, push him down". On this paper was a sentence that I was also extremely familiar with: "There is no higher art than death. Death is life."

  This phrase is a catchphrase of Koga 'Haru' E, a famous Japanese writer. I knew this phrase because I had read the works of another Japanese writer, Kawabata Yasunari, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature and opposed suicide, saying "No matter how much you hate the world, suicide is an immature and unenlightened act." However, when it came to himself, he calmly said, "Silent death is infinite life." On a certain day in 1972, he told his family that he was going for a walk, and later his assistant found him with a gas pipe in his mouth in his writing apartment.

  As for the reason of his suicide, there has been a saying circulating in Japanese literary circles that after another famous writer Yukio Mishima committed suicide, Kawabata went to the scene and saw Mishima's beheaded body and listened to the police's explanation. At that time, he seemed to have received a great shock and told his other disciple Osamu Tezuka: "It should be me who was beheaded." Since then, Kawabata's originally weak body became even weaker, and soon the suicide incident occurred.

  I certainly don't believe that two Japanese people and I and Chu Jiangshan would have any connection, they committed suicide when Chu Jiangshan was still a little kid, and I hadn't been born yet, so the meaning of this sentence in the coffin can only be about itself, and has nothing to do with who said it.

  I have a headache, the meaning of this sentence is easy to understand, but I really can't see what the hell it has to do with Chu Jiangshan's success. It reminds me of another quote from Yukio Mishima: "But my heart is directed towards black night, fresh blood and death."

  I threw the paper onto the 'bed', looked up at the ceiling, and silently thought about these two sentences in my heart. In a daze, I felt like something was pressing on my chest, and I gradually couldn't breathe. I'm not unfamiliar with this phenomenon; traditional Chinese medicine calls it "dream entrapment", Western medicine calls it "sleep paralysis", while folk terms are more terrifying - "ghost pressing the bed" or "ghost pressing the body". People feel that their brain is very clear-headed but their body can't move at all. In fact, this is a normal phenomenon; almost everyone will encounter it several times in their lifetime due to various reasons. So I'm not nervous, and slowly breathed, and after a while, my hands and feet gradually regained sensation, and my eyelids moved a few times. However, the feeling of pressure on my chest became heavier and heavier, and I even felt that if this continued, I would definitely be crushed to death.

  I finally regained my strength, the first thing I did was to open my eyes, in front of me was a huge curtain, behind the curtain there was a person standing in mid-air, under the curtain 'exposed' a pair of 'woman's feet, on her feet she wore a pair of red leather shoes, this pair of leather shoes were now stepping on my chest.

  This is the second time I've seen a curtain appear out of thin air in my own room. I know some people have many hallucinations when they encounter what's called "ghost pressing down on the bed", but I'm wide awake now, and I know this isn't a hallucination - I really saw a huge curtain with a woman standing behind it. I heard my own teeth chattering loudly, and I was so scared that I couldn't move.

  The pair of red high-heeled shoes on my chest seemed like a thousand-pound boulder, as if it was going to squeeze out the last breath of air from my chest cavity. I found it increasingly difficult to take in a breath, and I didn't know where I got the strength from, but suddenly I sat up and yanked open the curtains. I opened my eyes wide and saw someone hanging from the ceiling.

  No, this is not a person, it's a doll! But this doll is the same size as a real person, wearing a red nightgown, with long hair covering her cheeks, and empty grayish-white eye sockets. I look up at her, she looks down at me, with a hint of a sly smile on the corner of her mouth. This doll, I've seen it countless times before, it's the likeness of little Rui when she was young.

  At that moment, everything in front of me suddenly disappeared. If I hadn't found myself sitting on the 'bed', I would have thought that everything just now was a dream, but I knew it wasn't a dream, I really saw it.

  I lifted it up, and there was nothing on the ceiling. Why can I always see a curtain? And why do I always see Xiaohua every time I see the curtain? I took out the jade pendant from the wall, with peonies as red as blood on it. Suddenly, an idea popped into my mind: when peonies turn red, it means someone is going to die. Is this person Xiaohua?

  I picked up the phone, and Xiaohui's was still turned off. I was a bit worried about Xiaohui, and also had some vague worries about myself. This worry seemed to come from nowhere, but that fear lingered in my heart and couldn't be shaken off. I felt a bit at a loss, not knowing what to do or where to go. Looking at those few pieces of 'jade' pendants, I suddenly had an idea: maybe I should go find the person whose address was on them.